KGA-TV
KGA-TV is the ABN Network affiliate that serves the San Francisco, CA area. It broadcasts on channel 7 and can be viewed in the Oakland, San Bruno and Pacifica communities. Oakland serves as the Alameda-East Bay news bureau while Pacifica and San Bruno serve as the South Bay bureau. KGA first signed on the air on May 5, 1949 as the second oldest television station in San Franscisco and is ABN's lone three-letter call sign. It had signed on five years after KXNY (now KXBY) (channel 10). KGA-TV's original studios were located in the renovated Sutro Mansion near Mount Sutro in San Fransisco, then moved to Pacifica Plaza in 1959, and to the Alameda Square in 1985 where KGA now stands. Promos and slogans These contain local promos or slogans specific to KGA and not ABN itself. Channel 7 One for all 1980-1984 The Bay Area's Very Own 2015-present The Bay Area's Ultra HD Leader, News Team 7 News themes Cool Hand Luke: The Tar Sequence Lalo Schifrin 1969-1981 And you 1981-1986 The one for all 1986-1989 Brave New world 1989-1996 KSFC News theme 1997-2007 Chicago's Very Own (V.1, V.2) 615 Music 2007-2016 This is the place 2016- News operations KGA-TV presently broadcasts 61 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with eleven hours on weekdays and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to locally produced news programming, it is the highest newscast output of any television station in San Francisco and the state of California. In addition, the station produces Instant Replay, a 20-minute sports highlight program that airs on Sunday evenings during the final 20 minutes of the 10:00 p.m. newscast and is hosted by longtime sports director Dan Roan. Since July 8, 2010, SLTV airs live half-hour editions of KGA-TV's 10:00 p.m. newscast on certain nights in which KGA-TV is scheduled to telecast a sports event being held on the East Coast at 9:00 p.m. (an additional half-hour live newscast then airs following the game on KGA-TV). KGA-TV's news department is notable for the longevity of its on-air news staff, with many of its news anchors having worked for channel 7 for at least ten years. News has played an important role on KGA-TV since the station's beginnings, due in part to its ties to the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1965, KGA-TV introduced the first news anchor team, Gary Park and Jim Ruddle. On March 10, 1970, KGA-TV debuted the first hour-long Night time newscast in the Coast with the news tonight when it moved its half-hour 10:00 p.m. newscast (then titled John Drury and Newseven) to 11:00 p.m. The second half-hour of the program was dropped on June 9, 1990, with the newscast being accompanied at 11:00 p.m. KGA first launched an early-evening newscast on September 15, 1981, when it premiered the Action 7 News at five, a One-hour program at 5:00 p.m. Monday through Fridays.The early-evening newscast expanded Saturday and Sunday evenings on July 12, 2014; the weekday editions of the newscast were later expanded to include a second hour (starting at 4:00 p.m.) two months later on September 8, 2014.On January 5, 2016, the station restored a 11:00 p.m. newscast – which only airs Monday through Fridays – to its schedule after 19 years. Since the reformatting as a prime time newscast, KGA-TV has been the ratings leader in the 10:00 p.m. timeslot, with or without news competition in the arena. In the spring of 2006, however, KGA gained competition from other Bay Area stations launching its news department in August 1987 with the premiere of half-hour 7:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts, each consolidated those programs into a single broadcast that went up against KGA's established newscast at 10:00 p.m. Although KGA's competition aggressively marketed its fledgling newscast towards younger audiences and as having a fresher style compared to KGA's more traditional news format, viewers remained loyal to channel 7, which has remained #1 in the ratings at 10:00 ever since. For this reason, some of KGA's competition moved back its prime time newscast to an earlier timeslot in September 2008, leaving KGA as the only 10:00 newscast in San Francisco. In 1984, KGA debuted an hour-long midday newscast at noon each Monday through Friday, originally under the title News Day. The midday newscast would eventually expand to 90 minutes (starting at 11:30 a.m.) on September 15, 2008, and then to two hours (at 11:00 a.m.) on October 5, 2009. To this day, KGA airs News Team 7 Daybreak but have dropped the two-hour time frame moving the start time to 12:00 PM Pacific time. The station made its first foray into weekend morning news with the debut of hour-long 8:00 a.m. newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays in 1992 with KGA Weekend Morning News, now called Sunrise Bay Area Weekend Edition The station dropped its weekday morning children's programs on September 6, 1984, replacing them with the then one hour-long KGA Morning News; that newscast gradually expanded over time: first to two hours in January 1997, then to three hours from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. eight months later, with half-hour expansions in January 2001 (to 5:30 a.m.), January 2004 (to 5:00 a.m.), August 16, 2010 (to 4:30 a.m.), and July 11, 2011 (to 4:00 a.m.), with an hour-long expansion (to 10:00 a.m.) on September 3, 2013. KGA would bring back the morning children's programming on Saturday morning's following Sunrise Bay Area Weekend Edition at 9:00 AM Pacific time under the ABN-Toonopolis Saturday Super Show banner in partnership with ABN's cable network partner, Toonopolis. News helicopter operations In July 1996, KGA-TV began using a Eurocopter AS350 B2 helicopter for newsgathering, "Sky7," which is used for certain breaking news events and traffic reporting. KGA retired the Eurocopter AS350 in 2001 with the purchase of a Bell Jet Ranger 607, named "SkyNet 7". In 2009 in anticipation of the digital transition, KGA upgraded their 2009 Bell Jet Ranger 604 model, named "SkyNet 7 HD". In 2015, KGA purchased a Spyder YV Series from Spyder Valley Manufacturing for their Ultra HD coverage, named "Skylink 7 Ultra HD". News music On November 1, 2007, KGA debuted a new custom news music package Chicago's Very Own by 615 Music (which shares its name with a John Hegner-composed news theme that the station used from 1996 to 1997). On July 19, 2008, KGA-TV became the third television station in the San Francisco market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition (as of July 2010, KGA-TV is the first station in the market to broadcast all locally originated portions of its newscasts, including live field reports, in HD; this is in contrast to the other major English-language news stations in Chicago, which all broadcast in-studio segments in HD and some or all of their live field footage in 16:9 widescreen standard definition). Notable incidents "Golden Blackout" incident On June 19, 2016, a hacker proclaimed as a Golden State Warriors fan hacked into the main signal of channel 7 and blacked out the nine subchannels while also DDoSing KGA's IP addresses causing a mass wipeout of all systems. The blackout occurred at the end of the second quarter of the seventh game between GS and Cleveland the moment the hacker had seen Cleveland ahead of GS. It is believed the hacker also transmitted a virus similar to the infamous "Stuxnet" worm causing several systems to shutdown prematurely. It had also wiped out the transmitters' direct satellite feed to the game while creating a domino effect on 7.2 through 7.10. The hack caused eleven hours of lost airtime, and millions of dollars in damages to the station. Worse yet, KGA's Emergency Alert System relays were also taken offline as well as the NOAA Weather Radio transmitter connected inside KGA's weather office which added another three hours of lost air time and more resources to reactivate the EAS relays and NOAA Weather Radio transmitters. This is referred to as the "Golden Blackout". Category:ABN Domestic Television Corporation Category:Champion Digital Broadcasting Category:ABN Affiliates Category:California Category:Television channels and stations established in 1958 Category:Former ABC affiliates Category:Former ABC affiliated stations Category:Former UPN Affiliates Category:Former UPN affiliates Category:Former independent stations Category:Former Independent stations Category:San Francisco, CA Category:Oakland, CA